After seeing Audiard’s Un Prophete, I scoured the internet for other reviews of the film which appealed to my political agenda and my thoughts more generally. I didn’t really find any, so I thought I would write down some of my initial reactions.

To be totally reductive, Un Prophete has been described as the Godfather meets The Battle of Algiers. As my knowledge of the crime film is limited, I’ll stick to the assessment of it as the latter.  Un Prophete is much more and much less than The Battle of Algiers, yes by and large the key players are the same–the French and the North African. And it many ways the film produces the same anti-colonial sentiment, but Un Prophete is less about the brown nation and more about the brown body, the persona, and his or her relation to the French state– the banlieue, the prison. Un Prophete is loaded with religious themes. Thus, our persona is then refracted through Islam. Where the crossroads of the world is not Mecca, but the French prison.

In many ways, the film performs certain sacrilege. We see our Franco-Magrabi Mohammed, or Malik learning to suck dick with a blade in his mouth– his Angel Gabriel is then the man he kills with said blade, whose spectral form visits Malik on the regular. In one the film’s more spectacular moments and quite clearly one of the filmmaker’s favorite moments, we see Malik rather daringly murdering a handful of heavily armored and armed Italians. Malik leaves the armored car with his bounty, deafened by the incident. To the Muslim viewer appealing to Audiard’s visual langauge, the experience of a close-range gun shot is then attempting replicate the deafening  voice of God. Despite all of this, we do not see Malik as religious at all, his allegiances to other North Africans, Arabs and Muslims are ambivalent at best.

In interviews, Audiard has denied the film any religious subtext. Yet at the same time, he still aims rather high. Audiard hopes the film will create “icons, images for people who don’t have images, the Arabs in France.” And quite clearly the film is poised to do that, however, I think here there must be some recognition of the difference  between the  director’s social identity and his production of brown and black bodies with the hope that it will then inspire similarly raced audiences. And quite frankly, I’m not entirely sure this film is going to illegally downloaded in the French suburbs. And perhaps I’m being unfair here, but’s fate might be closer to that of The Battle of Algiers– The Knesset and The Pentagon.

In the end, I think Audiard’s film is most successful in one of the film’s final scenes with our Angel Gabriel. Our Angel invites Malik to read–citing the Prophet and Gabriel’s first encounter. “Iqra” — Read. Where the audience and Malik are invited to do much for than that–that we too can be prophets?

I am clearly fucked up about the world.

Just some more offensive nonsense from the Birthright Israel folks.

H/t to Meena for sharing.

Ok, so this film might be employing some hokey “look, they’re just like you and me” bullshit and I knew we weren’t getting through this trailer without seeing some fucking calligraphy, but this appears to be pretty adorable. And unfortunatley, there’s the simple pleasure of seeing Arab (and probs Iranian and South Asian) actors getting some goddamn work.

Oh and Alia Showkat (Maeby Fünke) of Arrested Development fame should be pretty awesome to watch.

I’m not familiar with Intifada Arabic and I ask for clarification.
One answers willingly, in a dispassionate Hebrew: “You know, things like: ‘Shut off you car’ or ‘Open your trunk.’”
Others from the group collaborate in the telling: “And words like ‘curfew’ or phrases like ‘Get out of the car.’”
Their list builds slowly at first, like the recitation of phrases once committed to memory in a foreign-language class and now rather awkward on their tongue. Abu Ra’id interrupts, to remind them of expressions they’ve forgotten: “There’s also ‘Open the door.’”
Building on his suggestion, they begin to pick up speed, adding to the compedium: “And ‘Give me your I.D.’”
“Or ‘Hands above your head.’”
Over coffee and kanafe in Abu Ghosh’s late afternoon sun, Jewish customers and Palestinian host rehearse these national lessons together.

Dear Jake Gyllenhaal,

I think you are so handsome. It makes me want to be a different man. Namely one who doesn’t care about the representations of Muslims in the media.

Regretfully,

Me

Hats off to Muslim Reverie. Totally fucking shocked they pulled Alfred Molina into this aswell.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot of Iran the past couple days. And clearly, I feel somewhat slackjawed about what to say here and now. I guess I could talk about everyone saying something something about Twitter and the revolution… or something about tweeting from behind the chador… or bizarre jabs at middle class Tehrani youth culture… or the total discomfort of Andrew Sullivan posting Rumi poems in solidarity with the Iranian people… but I’m not sure where to begin so for the moment. I’ll just leave it with this:

“I am not Iran’s Michelle Obama. I am Zahra, the follower of Fatimah Zahra.  I respect all women who are active.” – Zahra Rahnavard

Rahnavard’s shout out to Bebe Fatimah is pretty fucking badass.